Furniture may be manufactured in a multitude of different configurations, each having a respective set of surface material options including fabrics, vinyls, textures, colors, finishes etc. This manufacturing complexity creates a challenge to furniture marketers because the preparation of a catalog displaying all possible configurations may be cost prohibitive. For larger furniture/textile manufactures, creating a catalog which comprehensively discloses all available furniture/surface material combinations would result in a binder that (i) cannot be readily released to the typical customer due to its physical size and cost, (ii) would largely comprise configurations a customer is simply not interested in, (iii) cannot be readily copied, and (iv) is difficult to update when changes in configurations and associated information occur. Furthermore, images, specifications, descriptions, prices and other label information may originate from different sources (e.g. furniture manufacturers, textile manufacturers, furniture/textile assemblers, distributors, retailers, photographers, etc.) which further complicates the compilation of product catalogs.
Online catalogs reduce some of these challenges. For example, a customer can browse an online furniture inventory, and print or download available materials. However, such sites typically do not provide images for all available furniture-surface material configurations. This is because it is prohibitively costly, especially for larger manufacturers, to manufacture all possible configurations, and photograph them for uploading and presentation at an online catalog. Also, new surface materials and furniture configurations are often added, complicating the manufacture-assembly-photography process for all possible configurations. These hurdles typically result in only the more popular configurations being provided. Customers that are not interested in this subset of available configurations are left to imagine the particular furniture-surface material configuration he or she is interested in.
What is needed is a method and apparatus that simplifies and enhances the provision of an online furniture catalog enabling customers to flexibly configure furniture-surface material combinations, and generate product documentation for those customer-defined configurations.